The Music Blog

Trust Us—We’re Celibate Pedophiles in Prada Shoes

Posted by DAN SAVAGE on November 29 at 10:55 AM

The Catholic Church released its latest love letter to the Gays today:

The Vatican newspaper said on Tuesday that homosexuality risked “destabilizing people and society,” had no social or moral value and could never match the importance of the relationship between a man and a woman.

As a gay Catholic (retired), a former altar boy (unmolested), a one-time semi-seminarian (it was a high school seminary), and an active destablizer of people and society (the sun used to revolve around the earth, you know, until the gays came along and ruined everything), I should probably be upset about the Church’s latest hateful rhetoric about gay people and gay priests.

But after years of listening to similar smears from American evangelicals—who, for the record, believe the Pope is the Prada-shod anti-Christ—the bigotry-come-lately of the Catholic Church seems almost quaint. Yes, it’s harmful, but it’s also pretty transparent: The Catholic Church has a pedophile problem, and it’s attempting to pin it all on gay priests. Gay priests are part of the problem, of course—I mean, the Catholic Church has long maintained that homosexuality is an “intrinsic moral disorder.ā€¯ It makes sense that many of the gay men attracted to the priesthood would see themselves and be, like, intrinsically morally disordered and stuff. So dropping all the homos from the priesthood will probably eliminate some of the sexual misconduct—not all of which has been pedophilia, not all of which has been homosexual in nature. It’s a blunt object, but not entirely ineffective.

But the root of the Catholic Church’s problem is celibacy. Practicing straights can’t be priests; practicing gays can’t be priests; women, gay and straight, can’t be priests—so who’s left exactly? It’s right there in the Vatican’s new position paper: gay men who have “overcomeā€¯ their homosexuality, or resisted it for three—count `em!—three long years can still be priests. So gays are still welcome in the Catholic priesthood if they’re very deeply closeted or very good liars. That should improve the priesthood, huh?

On a personal note, when I came out to my mom she went to a family friend, a priest, to cry on his shoulder. When she told Father Tom that I was gay, he told her he was too and that she should be glad that the world had changed so much for gays and lesbians, and that I wouldn’t have to live the kind of circumscribed, emotionally bereft life that he did. He told her to accept me and love me. Thanks, Father Tom.